CSA

A few years ago I found out about CSA's and joined a local farm share with a friend. For 14 weeks during the summer you stop by once a week to pick up your HUGE bounty of fresh locally grown organic produce as it grows in the fields. Our local farm is Terry's Berries and we often find ourselves picking raspberries elbow to elbow with Terry herself.

The first stop you make is into the farm stand where you can also pick up locally grown produce that isn't included in the share. These seedless watermelons were locally grown in Oregon.
Lately, our first stop is usually out back behind the farm stand to the animals. This week we met the most friendly barn cat that the kids played with for nearly an hour!

You can also join the egg share and when you go pick up your eggs you can also head out back and feed the chickens that those very eggs came from!

Some of the chickens escape! It's always fun to watch the kids try to catch them.

I love that you can stand back and look at the rows and rows of fruits and veggies growing and know exactly where yours came from. This farm is literally just miles from downtown Tacoma but feels so far away from anything city oriented.

The farm has recently started building a brick fire to cook their own bread in. However, this little chicken decided it was too hot outside so she came right in and made her home inside. The kids were surprised that when she left, she didn't leave any eggs.

A few weeks ago, these baby ducks were running free and it was such a joy to follow all 7 of the little ducklings around the farm and watch them stay so close to their mama. Now my kids totally get the saying "all their ducks in a row". If you look closely you can see the little yellow duck at the upper right found a way out of it's pen.

Inside the farm stand this is what you see above the farm share for the week. Typically they list the fresh herbs that you can pick as well as any other "you pick" fruits and veggies that they have extras of.

Everything you see in the black bins are produce that you get for the week.

There are even more items on the other side of the stand to collect or purchase too!

Above each item is a yellow sign that lets you know how much to weigh or grab for the week. There are two types of shares, the basic and the sample, the only thing different about them is the quantities. When you are told to weigh something it is all based on the honor system and you just try to get as closely as possible to the weight specified.

And this is the bounty from the week. It's hard to see everything but there was a lot! I had nearly three bags full of farm fresh goodness.

Isn't the produce amazing?!

We even headed out to the field to pick some raspberries.

I love the CSA! Isn't it amazing?

Now find one close to you and join.